HBO GO... Stopped. True Detective Finale Breaks Online Player

There are no finale spoilers ahead, but there are some episode 1-7 ones, so watch out if you haven't seen it.

It doesn’t take a true detective to work out why HBO GO stopped working last night. The Matthew Mcconaughey & Woody Harrelson-starring drama culminated with the finale as angry fans tried to navigate the cable channel’s online service, which buckled under the pressure.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Rustin Cohle in True Detective

It had all been leading up to this. 17 years of harrowing murders, tales of child abuse and a monumental cover up, latched on to by the show’s enigmatic Rustin Cohle (played by McConaughey to devastating effect), who refuses to give up on the Tuttle leads, is tied together in episode 8: 'Form and Void'.

But as millions of Americans settled down to watch the last installment of Nic Pizzolatto-written, Cary Joji Fukunaga-directed cop procedural-turned-character study of a drama, many were left disappointed. HBO GO couldn’t handle the sheer amount of people tapping in to the service.

“Due to overwhelmingly popular demand for #TrueDetective, we've been made aware of an issue affecting some users. Please try again soon,” read a tweet from HBO GO in an attempt to appease closure-hungry fans. What followed was a slew of tweets either mocking or denouncing the service.

Sure, True Detective quality has something to do with this. As the broody, menacing verdure of Louisiana provided a backdrop for gruesome crimes, existential chatter from Rustin a cover up that goes right to the senator (maybe), fans fell in love with the anthology series.

Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin follow up a lead

But this also has something to do with people borrowing friends HBO accounts. With no real measures in place to limit the amount of people using the same login, or even the amount of screens that can be watched on one account, many more people than expected attempted to watch True Detective on Sunday night.